Although this takes aim at large corporations, there are lessons for us legal marketers.

We’ve all done this stuff.

In a law firm context, it could be the dull matter description in the firm’s annual report, the scales of justice slapped on to a website, the bland design imagery for the latest brochure, the insincere copy in the corporate social responsibility report.

There’s a lot of bad marketing material in our world, and we’ve helped to create it.

Even in the legal directories world, where I focus my time, we’re advised by the directory publishers to “please avoid conventional clichés and marketing speak about client service” in our submissions.

With my submissions, I try hard not to drift into marketing speak – but to write in a clear, concise fashion with minimal jargon.

But I’ve done it. We all have. It’s impossible to spend a career in legal marketing and not have faltered occasionally.

This video has reminded me how important it is to write and speak like a real person.

The advantage we have is that we’re marketing highly skilled human beings – not objects where the uninspired advertiser tries to create an emotional response to get you to connect with their product.

So, it should be easier for us.

I fear though that as the market consolidates and law firms look and feel more like corporations, we’re going to see more of this marketing emptiness.

That’s not intended as a criticism of Chambers, but the company has never been a technology pioneer and still has an old-fashioned nineteenth century quill-and-ink flavor to its culture, despite its recent website overhaul.

The navigation is clear and nicely laid out on my iPhone, and the site appears to offer pretty much all the same content as one could find on the regular desktop website and hard copy publications.

That’s no mean feat when you consider how much information the company produces through its large portfolio of legal directories, as well as additional products like the legal practice guides.

As a technological challenge, it’s harder to convert a legacy business with an existing website of such size and complexity to a mobile version than to start with a mobile-optimized site from the beginning.

Chambers & Partners isn’t the only major legal directory with a mobile site.